Michael Ridge — Street Cabinet
Street Cabinet features three minimal drone/ field recording works from Norwich UK’s Michael Ridge( Acerbitas, Norfolk Trotter, Zebra Mu). The release appears as either a tape release or a digital download- I’m reviewing the latter.
The recycled tape( with a round green sticker on its play side) comes in a black card slip- this features a low-grade/ photo copy-like stick-on covers featuring images of the street cabinet used for creating the three tracks. This had an edition of just fourteen copies- but the release is still available as a digital download from here
The tracks are created by attaching a magnetic Geophon (omnidirectional contact microphone) to the cabinet( which is somewhere in the village he lives in)- it has metal casing and features interior fans.
Each track is untitled, and each is dead on the ten-minute- presenting subtly different, yet equally entrancing pieces of drone matter. So the first track consists of a taut circling hoover and a dull pulse, which is unfed by a distant buzz/ hum. There is a glowing & rounding quality to this track, and sonically it feels quite clean, yet at the same time mysterious as if you can never fully grab the true clarity of the whole thing like it’s just out of reach of your hearing- and you keep mentally try to resolve the clarification, but it never fully comes.
Track two blends this more actively repetitive bass throb, with a rapidly rotating but more distanced tone spin- which at points feels like it speeding up, but in reality, I believe it’s fixed at the same speed. There is a feeling of brooding malevolence about this track too.
Finally, the third track has a faint revolving yet tolling tone- this is underfed by metallic sheet reverberation. This feels oddly ritual in its tone- bringing to mind looking down from the top floor of a large building to watch a slow-moving & gently reverberation fight between two huge metallic robots
Street Cabinet is another interestingly themed/well-released work by Mr Ridge, and it would be great to see more drone-based releases, as he certainly puts his own spin on the form.